I wanted to give an update of where you might be able to find Pixar animators, directors and story artists teaching….

At The California College of Art in Oakland, they are lucky enough to have a director, Mark Andrews teaching the story class. Whoever is in that class should consider themselves lucky having Mark. He is one of the best teachers. I will be coming back next semester to teach performance based animation. There are many other Pixar artists at CCA such as Brett Parker (animator) Don Crum (2d animator) Doug Sheppick (stop mo animator). Josh Cooley (story) was recently teaching story.

The Academy of Art in San Francisco, where myself and many former spline doctors taught saw the return of the same type of classes we taught there for about 10 years. Some of my former students, KC Royer, Kevin Chesnos, Stephen Wong, and Mark Harris are now teaching 3 tiers of classes there. Other animators teaching in the program are Terry Song and Jamie Landes.

Animation Mentor obviously has many Pixar artists teaching with their very succesful program.

On the Masterclass front, Matt Luhn and I expect to teach a few next year. We will keep you posted. Thank you for the continued support and we look forward to some interesting events on Spline Doctors in 2011. (new doctors, podcasts, 2 new animation challenges and more posts!) Again, thank you.

I came from California College of the Arts and I’ll vouch for Andrew when he says who ever finds themselves in those classes are beyond lucky. Best place to get up close and personal with great people and learn from them. If Andrew takes the time to teach there, that should say something about the program. thumbs up

December 27, 2010 @ 4:29 pm

Peter Driscoll

Please please please come back to london!!!!
Pete

December 28, 2010 @ 11:07 am

Andy

Hey Andrew!

Thanks for the heads up info! About AAU, 3 tiers of classes, does that mean there are 3 different levels of animation where those Pixar animators are teaching?

December 29, 2010 @ 5:41 pm

David

Hello,

I was wondering if there are any character animation classes in California during the summer for high school students.

I have been teaching myself to animate by articles on the Internet and several books, but I would love to have more formal training.

Check them out. They are really great. There are many opportunities to learn out there and it is really great that you take initiative to teach yourself and try to improve yourself. it reminds me a lot of myself. hope everything goes well, and
hope this information helps you.

-Danny Gonzales

January 18, 2011 @ 3:42 am

David

Matt B

I just started making out my GDC 11 schedule and I plan on attending both yours and Matt Luhn’s talks. I’m quite excited, this’ll be my first time out there as well as seeing either of you talk. Should be great, right?